Chapter 2178: Battle of Two Cities! (20)
Peter was confused and didn't understand anything. Although he was not interested in occultism, he still wanted to know what was going on. Why were there two Constantines? What was the relationship between them? What were they talking about with Dr. Sosip?
Peter certainly couldn't figure it out, but he knew he had a powerful helper, so he returned to the black sun and asked his questions as piously as possible.
Soon, a lot of knowledge was stuffed into his mind. Peter sighed in pain and sat on the ground trying to digest the complex occult knowledge.
When he had read almost everything, he realized that all this knowledge was about John Constantine.
Constantine is special.
This is what all the information wants to express, and the principle probably has to start with the grievances between heaven and hell.
In short, the countless universes in the world where Constantine is located have the same heaven and hell, and the fight between the believers of heaven and hell in the human world does not only occur in one universe, but in all universes at the same time.
However, due to certain factors, Heaven and Hell cannot treat the human world as a hot war battlefield, but their cold war has never stopped, including faith war, information war, and countless proxy wars of all sizes.
This situation lasted for a long time, until one day, the Archangel of Heaven and the Demon King of Hell thought that this could not go on any longer, and we should sit down and talk, and compete in a more civilized and fairer way.
This way is Constantine.
Constantine himself is a black box for gambling, and his soul is given special permissions. No demon king of Heaven or Hell can open the box to check the power components inside, and can only bet blindly.
In short, no one in Heaven and Hell knows how much power others have lent to Constantine, nor the specific content of the contract between them. Everyone signs and borrows blindly.
When Constantine dies, the black box will be opened, and the person who bets the most will take everything, including Constantine's special soul and what others have invested in him.
This is a large-scale gambling competition jointly held by Heaven and Hell, and Constantine is just a card table.
In order to ensure the fairness of the game, no one is allowed to use force to infuse power into Constantine's body, and Constantine's consent must be obtained.
But how can angels and demons not take advantage of loopholes?
They first use their influence in the human world to create trouble for Constantine, such as sending demons or clergy to create disasters and guide Constantine to solve them. In order to save people, Constantine must borrow power from them, so he will naturally agree to sign a contract with them and accept their power, and angels and demons will have a legal opportunity to follow.
The reason why angels and demons are deceived by him again and again is just that they keep following.
Schiller discovered this earlier than Constantine, because he once tried to repay his debt for Constantine, and Constantine never thought of doing so.
Constantine has been refusing to pay his debts. Most of his work in this half of his life revolves around how to refuse to pay his debts. No Constantine in the universe intends to pay his debts honestly, and no one will pay his debts for Constantine. Schiller is the first.
Schiller paid it off for him, so at the moment of paying it off, he found that Constantine had no debt, he was just a prop for the game between heaven and hell.
Of course, no one took the initiative to tell Schiller this, they pretended to accept the energy paid by Schiller, but Schiller found that when he paid off Constantine's debt, he was equivalent to inheriting Constantine's position, and the devil and angel could bet on him.
As for how he found out, we have to mention the mystical knowledge about the universe that Schiller had learned in the French manor.
In fact, this was not the first time Schiller came into contact with mysticism, and the first time he came into contact with mysticism was earlier than everyone imagined, that happened in the previous life.
There is a special group in Schiller's mind hall. They are neither doctors nor professors, and they have nothing to do with psychology. They usually do not appear in the corridors of the tower, but are scattered in various rooms.
This group of Schillers has a common attribute-they are on the magic side.
There was no magic in the world where Schiller lived in his previous life, but this does not mean that Schiller cannot study mysticism, or that he is destined to study mysticism, because what happened to him can no longer be explained by science.
Autism in childhood interfered with the development of Schiller's abilities, and the busyness of his youth also left him no time to investigate what his powerful strength was.
When he finally achieved a higher social status and had a more stable life, he could finally start to study what was going on with all the extraordinary things in himself.
Normally, it is impossible for someone to imagine that he was thrown into this world by God, so Schiller's first suspect was genes.
There are many excellent scholars in his working environment, including many geneticists. After a series of investigations, Schiller found that it should have nothing to do with this.
Then he looked into mental problems, but he was a psychologist himself. He knew that his ability had far exceeded the scope of schizophrenia fantasy and existed in this world.
After investigating all the possibilities on the scientific side, even if Schiller didn't want to believe it, he had to doubt that there might really be magic in this world.
So after he had achieved great success in psychological psychoanalysis and research, he chose to take the same path as Newton and began to study theology.
Schiller spent about 5 years visiting all over the world. He had dabbled in history, religion, theology, mysticism, and folklore, mainly to find out whether there were some records with information related to his ability.
In the end, of course, nothing was found.
There was a lot of information that could be matched, but there was very little evidence that could be found, and there was no real and accurate one. Until Schiller's plane crashed, this was still an unsolved case.
Because this is the longest and most informative intelligence collection work in Schiller's life, and the way of thinking required to collect this information is completely different from the previous academic research and scientific investigation, so there are special personalities to carry out this kind of research.
They must abandon the previous rigorous, professional, and evidence-based research methods, and use a more abstract, more associative, and infinitely close to subjective idealism method to carry out this kind of research, and thus a group of personalities were born.
Of course, idealism has always been the enemy of scientific research, and doctors are even more taboo about "I don't want you to think, I want me to think", so this group of personalities almost never appear in the tower, and there are rooms specially customized for them in the tower, which basically fits their attributes.
For example, the professor Schiller in the Hogwarts room is actually one of the Schillers on the magic side. His main research direction is the magic image that appears in famous literary and film and television works, and the code name of the personality is also the usual "magician".
Of course, there are also "doctors" representing philosophy and history, "agents" representing social folklore, "bishops" representing religion and theology, and some more abstract "inspirations", "fallacies", "balance", etc.
It was they who discovered that after Schiller paid off Constantine's debt, his own existence changed, so they deduced the general direction of things, and later confirmed with Lucifer that it was indeed the case.
After Schiller planned to change his identity, these personalities that had nothing to do with psychology, or even the entire scientific side, could finally float to the surface consciousness to control the body.
And after confirming the linkage between the two universes, Schiller got his own new origin story in both DC and Marvel, and the keywords of the origin story were magician, doctor, agent and bishop.
But it was not only Schiller who deduced the truth. In his DC universe, Constantine, who had recovered his health and freedom, also realized that Schiller had replaced his status and became a black box for heaven and hell to bet on after he found that he could not contact any angels and demons at all.
Constantine of the fused Earth came to New York to hide from Dr. Sosip, and Schiller came to the fused Earth to hide from Constantine of his universe.
Again, regardless of what they have experienced, neither Batman nor Constantine is a normal person. Their physical and mental health does not mean that they can become a universally friendly good person.
And Dr. Sosip then received a call from Constantine of the fused Earth.
"Who are you?!" His voice sounded angry, and he said, "Why are you investigating me? Why did you turn out this number?! Do you know what this means?"
"This represents a mistake you made." His tone was very slow, still containing a wonderful sense of rhythm, sounding like a pious prayer.
The voice on the other side stopped abruptly. After a long while, Constantine said, "You don't understand. I have no choice."
"Of course I understand." The doctor put one hand on the stone slab, his face solemn and his eyes dark, as if listening to the confession of a believer. He said, "You had no choice when it happened. Is it the same after it's over?"
"I feel very guilty about this, but you, or any demons and angels standing behind you, have no position or qualifications to blame me for this, because you are the culprit."
Without waiting for a response, Constantine continued, "Listen, do me a favor. I need to summon a city, but I have no relevant experience. You need to go to the library of All Souls College, Oxford University, and help me find a supernatural case of a disappeared town."